The Edge in Federation Square was packed to capacity on May 16 for the Feminism in the Time of Gaza forum, organised by Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN).
At least 450 people, mostly women, with many wearing keffiyehs, came to hear four impressive speakers.
The panel featured Grace Tame, former Australian of the year; Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, a lawyer, author and advocate for human rights; Randa Abdel-Fattah, a writer of fiction and non-fiction and advocate for Palestinian people and human rights; and Jordana (Jordy) Silverstein, a senior research fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the University of Melbourne.
APAN president Nasser Mashni opened the forum and Australian Palestinian writer Micaela Sahhar moderated.
Turnbull-Roberts said her feminism led her to a deep solidarity with Palestinians, reminding her of the colonisation of First Nations people.
Silverstein said it meant bearing witness to and opposing settler colonists here and in Gaza. It meant 鈥渃reating a kinder world together鈥. She said she was surprised by the lack of solidarity shown by journalists for their colleagues in Palestine.
Silverstein said journalists here had helped spread the lie that Jews are constantly under attack and the media overemphasised 鈥渁ntisemitism鈥. At the same time, she said not enough attention has been paid to Islamophobia, and that there had been an inversion of victim and perpetrator.
Silverstein said the opinions of Zionist Jews are given more mainstream media space, while Palestinians are not treated as a diverse and complex group with different opinions.
Silverstein also said that Zionism promotes a gender binary and likes to make distinctions between women and children, and Arab men. Arab men are depicted as violent. Even Palestinian children are represented as threatening.
Tame said that this is the first time she had spoken publicly about Palestine and disclosed she had been asked not to speak about the genocide at many events. She said 鈥渆mpathy should have no boundaries鈥 and that all humans must be treated with fairness and equity. She added that theory without action is 鈥減ointless鈥.
Tame said the language mainstream feminists use is very inaccessible to and exclusionary of ordinary women. Reaching the cohort who is not yet convinced, or not yet taking action, and getting them to act, is 鈥渨here the hope is鈥.
Abdel-Fattah said the media is complicit in leading to the final solution being carried out in Gaza. She said she didn鈥檛 trust mainstream feminism, pointing to the bombing of Afghanistan in the name of rescuing women.
She singled out the ABC and the听骋耻补谤诲颈补苍 for 鈥渢urning victims into abusers鈥, saying they are more 鈥渄angerous鈥 than the Murdoch media because they are 鈥渕ore respectable鈥. She criticised leaders for not calling out the genocide and said feminism must be reclaimed as 鈥渁nti-imperialist and anti-racist鈥.
Abdel-Fattah noted that Aboriginal men and Palestinian men had been 鈥減rofoundly dehumanised鈥, 鈥渁n attempt to stifle resistance by characterising them as terrorists鈥. She said the deaths of women and children are seen as being more tragic than the deaths of Palestinian men.